The Arkansaw traveler., 1887-10-08

when all the gas-jets are afame. A huge darky in 8 swallow tailed coat, with tip bought diamond as big as hazelnut in his shirt front, presides as head waiter. He is the ebony ear of the edible and bibible domain. His authority is absolute, and from his fiat there is no appeal short of the su-
 preme court of the United States. A
 ten-dollar bill slipped into his hand se- cures you seat among the eminently respectables, at first class table, with a we'll trained waiter A five-dollar civility- plaster gets place away down about the middle of the monster
 hash hall, with passable attendant. To tender anything less than five is to register yourself as nobody, and you are marched nearly a hundred yards down toward the kitchen and the slop- barrels, and turned over to the delicate attentions of a clumsy ex-bull-
 teamster or rn-field hand. Then
 begins wrestle for grub. The phrase is trifie inelegant, but nothing less forceful so exactly conveys the idea.
 My table has no sugar. bowl or cas- ters. not q pepper box, salt cellar, or vinegar bottle. When want one of these indispensable little articles, my jaybird- heeled Senegambian has to fight for it with the waiter at another table, who has probably just stolen it from his next neighbor. Menus and napkins are always scarce as hen- teeth, and the walters constantly raid each others tables for them, and then wrangle over the petty larcenies. My sable Ganymede rarely lays bill-of- fare before me without saying "Please, sah, don't let dat niggah ober dah git away wid it while Pse gone in de kitchen" The cooking is poor and sloppy, and he or she who fails to rush in to the feed- troughs as soon as the doors are opened has to be content with all sorts of scraps and scrag ends. The beef frequently reminds me of what l used to wear out my jaws on six or eight years ago at the Palace Hotel, in Santa Fe. It was so tough that l always cherished suspicion that the New Mexicans were still serving up the original old steers that hauled the miraculous image of the Virgin Mary which came into that region with Cortes or Coronado in l545, and now stands in the ancient Church of San Guadalupe. I remem- Der hearing one day that an old wo- man had broken out two of her false teeth trying to chew the gravy. The dish bearing is so slow that the guests become the waiters-perpetual wait CTS on the walters. Stewed prunes, or canned apricots at eight cents quart can, are often the only fruit, the coffee and tea are insipidly lukewarm when they reach the patience cultivators at thealleged festal boards, and the whole fare and service arc inferior to those at Minnetonka, Waukesha and dozen of our less pretentious western resorts. In fact, in these respects the swellest of Saratoga hotels is hardly better than some of the old time Deadwood stage stands.
 So much for the palatial structures, the imperial splendors, the indescrib- able and inconceivable luxuriousness, e td omne genus .fdpdoodlc6ug, that the summer scribblers munchau- senizc about. Now, what of the ray ishing beauty, the bewitching loveli- ness, the courtliness, the elegance, the exquisite grace and refinement, and all the transcendent entertainments that are supposed to tread on each others silken trails amid these fairv- like scenes?
 Nowhere in all the great republic over which floats the starry banner of the free, except possibly at Long Branch. have l ever encountered so many appallingly ugly women as at Saratoga. Summer after summer, it appears as if all the scarecrows on the continent had scrambled out of their cornfields, slipped themselves into satins and brocades, and gathered here in sort of national dime museum chamber of horrors. Hotels. board ing-houses, cottages and spring houses, porticocs, parlors, dining rooms, parks, drives and promenades overflow with richly -caparisoned nightmares-spectre- bats in peacock feathers. Huge female behemoths and leviathans in royal robes founder around on every hand. The hapless earth quivers and groans beneath their waddling tread. Several of them this season have to turn themselves edge wise to go through an ordinary door way. Swathed, each, in gorgeous en- broidered and brOcaded fabrics enou0h to clothe hippopotamus or Nor man. Percheron horse, and blazing with diamonds sown broadcast all over their vast areas of bosom, neck, ear, arm and hand, they move prodig- ious oritlammes of holy terror. Il have contemplated them through smoked glass till I have to carry my eyes in sling and wear a mustard plaster across the pit of my soul.